John at the Bar is a Friend of Mine, He gets me my Drinks for Free.
Issue 113: Wanted: Galvatron-Dead or Alive! Part 1*. 9th May 1987.
*Note: I’ve written the title as it’s parsed on the contents page- complete with exclamation mark- rather than how it’s presented in the comic itself as the words occur “In Fiction” on a poster.
Unnh... that’ll do nicely.
There are two notable things about this issue that, I suspect, will bring a slightly wider readership to this entry that might normally be the case (if you’re here as the result of a Googling, hello!). The first, and most recent, is that this is the first issue of the comic bought and read by James Roberts, currently the best writer of Transformers fiction by a country mile, meaning this issue is the start of a process that leads directly to all the lovely stuff we’ve been reading since Last Stand of the Wreckers.
As a tip of the hat to this, Roberts repeatedly includes references to 113 across all his work (about the only real sign that Bullets was his first solo professional writing was that he rather over did it there), meaning this issue number is burnt into the brains of many a new reader who otherwise might never have heard of the UK comic.
It would be tempting and far too lazy to go through the issue looking for influences on Roberts’s future work, but that’s also made extremely easy by half of the action being set in a SPACE pub, run by a weedy chatty robot who likes to give extended recaps of past events. It makes you wonder what sort of comics we’d be getting now if a slightly earlier issue had imprinted on Roberts, would we now be enjoying the adventures of palaeontologists amidst the Lost Light crew? Would the Mechanic now be the reformed villain turned co-Captain rather than Megatron? We should be more than a bit grateful it was this particular week that caught the eye of young Master Roberts.
The other notable thing about this issue is of course, that it’s the first appearance of Death’s Head. Now, stop me if you’ve heard this one before... Furman had written the script with what was intended to be a one-off (for this storyline) character who would serve as both an exposition tool and a catalyst for events before being killed off with little ceremony.
*Note: I’ve written the title as it’s parsed on the contents page- complete with exclamation mark- rather than how it’s presented in the comic itself as the words occur “In Fiction” on a poster.
Unnh... that’ll do nicely.
There are two notable things about this issue that, I suspect, will bring a slightly wider readership to this entry that might normally be the case (if you’re here as the result of a Googling, hello!). The first, and most recent, is that this is the first issue of the comic bought and read by James Roberts, currently the best writer of Transformers fiction by a country mile, meaning this issue is the start of a process that leads directly to all the lovely stuff we’ve been reading since Last Stand of the Wreckers.
As a tip of the hat to this, Roberts repeatedly includes references to 113 across all his work (about the only real sign that Bullets was his first solo professional writing was that he rather over did it there), meaning this issue number is burnt into the brains of many a new reader who otherwise might never have heard of the UK comic.
It would be tempting and far too lazy to go through the issue looking for influences on Roberts’s future work, but that’s also made extremely easy by half of the action being set in a SPACE pub, run by a weedy chatty robot who likes to give extended recaps of past events. It makes you wonder what sort of comics we’d be getting now if a slightly earlier issue had imprinted on Roberts, would we now be enjoying the adventures of palaeontologists amidst the Lost Light crew? Would the Mechanic now be the reformed villain turned co-Captain rather than Megatron? We should be more than a bit grateful it was this particular week that caught the eye of young Master Roberts.
The other notable thing about this issue is of course, that it’s the first appearance of Death’s Head. Now, stop me if you’ve heard this one before... Furman had written the script with what was intended to be a one-off (for this storyline) character who would serve as both an exposition tool and a catalyst for events before being killed off with little ceremony.
Starting as he means to go on.
However, he was so impressed by Geoff Senior’s design for the character of the robotic Bounty Hunter; he took the almost unprecedented move of going back and reworking the dialogue to make it even more idiosyncratic and memorable. The final result made such an impact that a stay of execution was made for Death’s Head, and Furman decided to work with Marvel UK’s big bods to contrive a situation whereby he’d be their copyright rather than Hasbro’s (a similar thing having been done by Budiansky with Circuit Breaker by randomly shoving her in Secret Wars 2).
This involved quickly throwing together a one page comic, called High Noon Tex, that was printed in other Marvel UK books prior to the publication of this issue, ensuing he was entirely Marvel property should the company want to do anything else with him in the future. As a sign of how quickly the one off comic was created, insanely young and basically untested artist Bryan Hitch was given the assignment rather than Senior himself. It’s fair to say this relationship created out of necessity will wind up working quite well for both Hitch and Death’s Head.
[It might be worth noting that the background information in Titan’s Fallen Angel trade has a different take whereby Death’s Head was created to launch Marvel UK’s own titles but, when this was delayed, his was put into Transformers so as not to let him go to waste. Assuming this isn’t totally made up, I’d suggest this is the version in Marvel’s own paperwork of the time, a little white lie to tighten their ownership of the character should Hasbro try and make a fuss.]
What I’ve always found interesting about this though, is that even before Furman knew the character had a future, he’d decided to devote over half the issue to two non-Transformers characters having a chat. You could argue that having a non-Transformer receive the exposition about the end of the movie and its aftermath makes it a bit less cumbersome, but it’s not as if Furman is otherwise averse to having characters discuss things they already know in the need of speeding the story along. It’s very easy to imagine a version of this story where, for example, new Decepticon leader Shockwave simply gets one of his troops (are we too soon for Sixshoot to be a likely candidate?) to go find Galvatron and remove any chance of him returning to claim leadership, with the rest of the story basically happening in exactly the same way.
To me this is the clearest sign yet of Furman’s itchy feet after two years working on the book, he’s not giving any less effort but he’s also ready to advance to the next stage of his career and at this point a 2000AD style story (something we’ve not really had before in Transformers but that will become more prevalent as we go along) about two new characters talking toot in a pub has much more appeal to him than the title robots.
This ties in somewhat nicely with something else that was going on at Marvel UK at the time, the attempts to capitalise on the success of their licensed titles (which was basically all of their output at this point, none of the “Main” Marvel heroes seem to have their own book now) by launching a range of monthly American style comics. All sorts of factors mean that Death’s Head’s own book won’t be launching for another year- and indeed won’t be the first one out of the gate- but the failed attempt at Zoids shows the idea was very much fermenting at this point.
So with the idea of doing their own books- and as we’ll see Marvel UK were very keen on creating a fully shared Universe that would include the tie-in titles- beginning to gain traction Furman would have been very aware this would be the perfect time to present his bosses with a ready-made character who not only had potential but, thanks to his appearance in their best selling title, would already have exposure to their potential readers.
That makes the entire creation process sound very cynical and cold, but the important thing is that it works, both in terms of the quality of this issue and the (by the standards of the rest of the characters Marvel UK will be creating as the ‘80’s become the ‘90’s) success Death’s Head will enjoy.
This involved quickly throwing together a one page comic, called High Noon Tex, that was printed in other Marvel UK books prior to the publication of this issue, ensuing he was entirely Marvel property should the company want to do anything else with him in the future. As a sign of how quickly the one off comic was created, insanely young and basically untested artist Bryan Hitch was given the assignment rather than Senior himself. It’s fair to say this relationship created out of necessity will wind up working quite well for both Hitch and Death’s Head.
[It might be worth noting that the background information in Titan’s Fallen Angel trade has a different take whereby Death’s Head was created to launch Marvel UK’s own titles but, when this was delayed, his was put into Transformers so as not to let him go to waste. Assuming this isn’t totally made up, I’d suggest this is the version in Marvel’s own paperwork of the time, a little white lie to tighten their ownership of the character should Hasbro try and make a fuss.]
What I’ve always found interesting about this though, is that even before Furman knew the character had a future, he’d decided to devote over half the issue to two non-Transformers characters having a chat. You could argue that having a non-Transformer receive the exposition about the end of the movie and its aftermath makes it a bit less cumbersome, but it’s not as if Furman is otherwise averse to having characters discuss things they already know in the need of speeding the story along. It’s very easy to imagine a version of this story where, for example, new Decepticon leader Shockwave simply gets one of his troops (are we too soon for Sixshoot to be a likely candidate?) to go find Galvatron and remove any chance of him returning to claim leadership, with the rest of the story basically happening in exactly the same way.
To me this is the clearest sign yet of Furman’s itchy feet after two years working on the book, he’s not giving any less effort but he’s also ready to advance to the next stage of his career and at this point a 2000AD style story (something we’ve not really had before in Transformers but that will become more prevalent as we go along) about two new characters talking toot in a pub has much more appeal to him than the title robots.
This ties in somewhat nicely with something else that was going on at Marvel UK at the time, the attempts to capitalise on the success of their licensed titles (which was basically all of their output at this point, none of the “Main” Marvel heroes seem to have their own book now) by launching a range of monthly American style comics. All sorts of factors mean that Death’s Head’s own book won’t be launching for another year- and indeed won’t be the first one out of the gate- but the failed attempt at Zoids shows the idea was very much fermenting at this point.
So with the idea of doing their own books- and as we’ll see Marvel UK were very keen on creating a fully shared Universe that would include the tie-in titles- beginning to gain traction Furman would have been very aware this would be the perfect time to present his bosses with a ready-made character who not only had potential but, thanks to his appearance in their best selling title, would already have exposure to their potential readers.
That makes the entire creation process sound very cynical and cold, but the important thing is that it works, both in terms of the quality of this issue and the (by the standards of the rest of the characters Marvel UK will be creating as the ‘80’s become the ‘90’s) success Death’s Head will enjoy.
"Where's my spin-off comic?"
It has to be said, this issue did need something to jazz it up as it’s very much a set up instalment, mostly being devoted to establishing the new status quo for the future stories, tellingly it can afford to give an entire page over to a gag where the story title is given in a wanted poster for Galvatron because from an entirely objective viewpoint there’s not really enough going on here to fill eleven pages.
This is where Death’s Head- and indeed the Robot Barkeep that sadly no one wants to give a spin-off comic to- makes everything better. The scene (which, in another sign of this being a very different type of story to what Furman has done before, is set on our first non-Cybertron alien planet) between the two of them is straightforward enough, upon seeing the wanted poster Death’s Head asks for and receives an extended recap of the end of the film, before the barkeeper goes into new territory by explaining Galvatron disappeared after being thrown out of Unicron and Rodimus became obsessed with trying to find him. This search was then scuppered by Shockwave regrouping the Decepticons on Cybertron, leading to a restart of the war and Rodimus taking out the bounty on Galvatron in the hope someone else will do his dirty work.
This later part is actually quite interesting, though it’s next issue that will really put meat on the bones of the new style of Cybertronian conflict, but it’s Death’s Head who sells the scene. As Furman realised, he looks fantastic and his personality more than matches it. A magnificent bastard who’d rather rip apart the face of the bartender with his knuckledusters than pay his bill, even his most basic lines are perfectly written to convey a darkly humorous cynical killer, complete with memorably idiosyncratic way of speaking (Though “Yes?” only ends a few sentences here, “Huh?” is tied with it for usage at this stage), he makes such an impression even here it feels perfectly natural he’d bounce over to his own comic, indeed it’s hard to fathom how he didn’t go on to be the biggest thing ever.
Even the gag of him not liking being called a bounty hunter (prefers Freelance Peacekeeping Agent, yes?), which in theory could get tired very quickly, is hugely entertaining and feels exactly right for the character.
What we have here is the perfect fusion of a writer and artist at the very top of their game, turning seven pages that could have been quite a dull read into something very special. And that only takes us halfway through this issue.
This is where Death’s Head- and indeed the Robot Barkeep that sadly no one wants to give a spin-off comic to- makes everything better. The scene (which, in another sign of this being a very different type of story to what Furman has done before, is set on our first non-Cybertron alien planet) between the two of them is straightforward enough, upon seeing the wanted poster Death’s Head asks for and receives an extended recap of the end of the film, before the barkeeper goes into new territory by explaining Galvatron disappeared after being thrown out of Unicron and Rodimus became obsessed with trying to find him. This search was then scuppered by Shockwave regrouping the Decepticons on Cybertron, leading to a restart of the war and Rodimus taking out the bounty on Galvatron in the hope someone else will do his dirty work.
This later part is actually quite interesting, though it’s next issue that will really put meat on the bones of the new style of Cybertronian conflict, but it’s Death’s Head who sells the scene. As Furman realised, he looks fantastic and his personality more than matches it. A magnificent bastard who’d rather rip apart the face of the bartender with his knuckledusters than pay his bill, even his most basic lines are perfectly written to convey a darkly humorous cynical killer, complete with memorably idiosyncratic way of speaking (Though “Yes?” only ends a few sentences here, “Huh?” is tied with it for usage at this stage), he makes such an impression even here it feels perfectly natural he’d bounce over to his own comic, indeed it’s hard to fathom how he didn’t go on to be the biggest thing ever.
Even the gag of him not liking being called a bounty hunter (prefers Freelance Peacekeeping Agent, yes?), which in theory could get tired very quickly, is hugely entertaining and feels exactly right for the character.
What we have here is the perfect fusion of a writer and artist at the very top of their game, turning seven pages that could have been quite a dull read into something very special. And that only takes us halfway through this issue.
Bad Ass.
The second half sees some actual Transformers turn up, as Death’s Head goes to Cybertron in order to have a quiet friendly word with Cyclonus and Scourge (this establishes his “Log Tapes” that will be a handy exposition tool in future). Though they tend to get a bit lost in the shuffle when people talk about this story, this is also an important issue for Bunny Ears and Beard as it firmly solidifies their personalities, angry full of themselves punks who act just that little too rashly and as such often wind up in it over their necks. All of which will have a major impact on future stories.
There’s a suggestion that they somehow know Galvatron is coming back that feels like a set up for a plot thread that never happens, and Furman perhaps over-eggs the attempt to build up Death’s Head by having them know of him by his amazing reputation, but the scene of them flying along and ranting at what a dick Shockwave is winds up being rather wonderful. It’s always nice to see Decepticons as friends rather than just grunts, plus the fact they whine about their boss in exactly the same way we all do is nice and fresh and, yes indeed, exactly the sort of thing you’d now expect from a James Roberts comic.
The fight between them and Death’s Head is also well done and gives Senior a chance to cut loose with the issue's only bit of action, my favourite panel being one of Cyclonus deflecting a blast with a pipe whilst firing his own gun and snarling insults at the mechanoid.
Things end with Cyclonus revealing Galvatron’s probably in the past, and Death’s Head uses the time machine to go get his bounty... This ending is perhaps slightly odd as it feels somewhat unlikely Death’s Head could just wander up to the time machine, that sort of poor security is exactly the sort of thing that could lead to Universe destroying paradoxes. It’s also unclear how he knows to go to 1987 rather than 1986, but otherwise this is an impressive opening to this arc, a perfect example of how even the most basic of stories can be made memorable if the right amount of care and attention is put into them. No wonder it changed James Roberts’ (and probably a fair few other readers, there's probably an accountant in Penge who is a complete and utter failure because he has all his sums add up to 113) life.
There’s a suggestion that they somehow know Galvatron is coming back that feels like a set up for a plot thread that never happens, and Furman perhaps over-eggs the attempt to build up Death’s Head by having them know of him by his amazing reputation, but the scene of them flying along and ranting at what a dick Shockwave is winds up being rather wonderful. It’s always nice to see Decepticons as friends rather than just grunts, plus the fact they whine about their boss in exactly the same way we all do is nice and fresh and, yes indeed, exactly the sort of thing you’d now expect from a James Roberts comic.
The fight between them and Death’s Head is also well done and gives Senior a chance to cut loose with the issue's only bit of action, my favourite panel being one of Cyclonus deflecting a blast with a pipe whilst firing his own gun and snarling insults at the mechanoid.
Things end with Cyclonus revealing Galvatron’s probably in the past, and Death’s Head uses the time machine to go get his bounty... This ending is perhaps slightly odd as it feels somewhat unlikely Death’s Head could just wander up to the time machine, that sort of poor security is exactly the sort of thing that could lead to Universe destroying paradoxes. It’s also unclear how he knows to go to 1987 rather than 1986, but otherwise this is an impressive opening to this arc, a perfect example of how even the most basic of stories can be made memorable if the right amount of care and attention is put into them. No wonder it changed James Roberts’ (and probably a fair few other readers, there's probably an accountant in Penge who is a complete and utter failure because he has all his sums add up to 113) life.
Toilet humour.
Transformation is very excited at the start of the newest mega-epic, and takes special care to emphasise Death’s Head is going to be a major player. Mind, the page is also hugely excited by the Cadbury’s Wildlife bar competition that’s starting next issue, so clearly everyone at Marvel towers was more than bit giddy with anticipation this week.
Grimlock receives a letter from one Neil Thompson of Bristol talking about how reading the comic has improved his literacy enough that it helped him pass his English O Level (which I’m assured by old people are much harder than the mamby pamby exams kids do today), I’ve spoken before about how the comic basically taught me to read, I wonder how many other British children improved said skills thanks to this book? That I think, more than anything else, is Furman’s real legacy as a writer, being behind the literacy of an entire generation of boys.
Who then use said leaning to go on the internet years later and moan about all his current Transformers writing. How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child.
Inhumanoids sees Earth Corps gets the sack thanks to a corrupt senator, but the most interesting thing in a conversation with a talking tree about the Age of Magic having ended and been replaced by the Age of Science, effectively the reverse of the next Hasbro property we’ll be seeing, Visionaries.
Robo-Capers brings its robots of history feature to an end with a modern day robot having to mop up piss in a public toilet. Lew Stringer is genuinely more awesome than the human mind can comprehend.
Next week we get the only and only example of a scene from the film being rehashed that ever worked, as Rodimus Prime is feeling the strain.
Also, my AMAZING video review of Age of Extinction can be seen HERE, in short, it’s rather good.
STOP PRESS!: Excitingly, just I was was pasting this last bit of text onto the site on Thursday evening, I spotted a thread started by Brendocon 2.0 over at TFArchive that got me very, very excited. Bob Budiansky is going to be at the London Film and Comic Con event taking place over the weekend of 18th-19th October this year. Read more HERE, and, assuming I can get the time off work, I will be going to shake the great man's hand. There are other TF people there (including what I think is another UK first in Jose Delbo), but Uncle Bob is going to be the main draw for me. But how will I stop myself calling him "Uncle Bob" to his face?
Grimlock receives a letter from one Neil Thompson of Bristol talking about how reading the comic has improved his literacy enough that it helped him pass his English O Level (which I’m assured by old people are much harder than the mamby pamby exams kids do today), I’ve spoken before about how the comic basically taught me to read, I wonder how many other British children improved said skills thanks to this book? That I think, more than anything else, is Furman’s real legacy as a writer, being behind the literacy of an entire generation of boys.
Who then use said leaning to go on the internet years later and moan about all his current Transformers writing. How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child.
Inhumanoids sees Earth Corps gets the sack thanks to a corrupt senator, but the most interesting thing in a conversation with a talking tree about the Age of Magic having ended and been replaced by the Age of Science, effectively the reverse of the next Hasbro property we’ll be seeing, Visionaries.
Robo-Capers brings its robots of history feature to an end with a modern day robot having to mop up piss in a public toilet. Lew Stringer is genuinely more awesome than the human mind can comprehend.
Next week we get the only and only example of a scene from the film being rehashed that ever worked, as Rodimus Prime is feeling the strain.
Also, my AMAZING video review of Age of Extinction can be seen HERE, in short, it’s rather good.
STOP PRESS!: Excitingly, just I was was pasting this last bit of text onto the site on Thursday evening, I spotted a thread started by Brendocon 2.0 over at TFArchive that got me very, very excited. Bob Budiansky is going to be at the London Film and Comic Con event taking place over the weekend of 18th-19th October this year. Read more HERE, and, assuming I can get the time off work, I will be going to shake the great man's hand. There are other TF people there (including what I think is another UK first in Jose Delbo), but Uncle Bob is going to be the main draw for me. But how will I stop myself calling him "Uncle Bob" to his face?
